World Cup final: whose flag will you fly?

Sunday's World Cup final between Spain and Holland presents the non-partisan
fan with a dilemma – which team to support? David Horspool trawls
the history of the nations' culture and cuisine in an attempt to find a
worthy winner

Safer to support the ref: Howard Webb will referee the World Cup final on Sunday
Photo: ACTION IMAGES

By David Horspool

9:34AM BST 09 Jul 2010

The final of the World Cup between the Netherlands and Spain this Sunday will be, we are told, a "great one for the neutral". In present-day Britain, neutrality over such a contest shouldn't necessarily be taken for granted. You might, for example, have a Dutch mother and be married to a Spaniard, like the Deputy Prime Minister (or me, for that matter). But even for those whose households are less definitively split than the Cleggs (or the Horspool-Buenos), it could be helpful to have a way of choosing which team to cheer on.

Sporting experts – you find them in pubs – might be able to make a choice on pure footballing grounds. The Spanish champions of Europe are like a more successful version of Arsenal, trying never to score a goal until at least a dozen passes have been threaded through the narrowest of gaps; while the Dutch, who last arrived at this stage of a World Cup advertising a swashbuckling form of "total football", now seem to have embraced a rather more no-nonsense, results-first (or, whisper it, German) version of the game. But there is talent and toughness on both sides, and, this being the 21st-century game, quite a lot of play-acting.

So perhaps football isn't the best guide for the would-be supporter. Sometimes, a convenient set of prejudices already exists, of the sort the Scots can rely on when England play ("Come on, Algeria!"), or the English used to dust off when Germany took the field (the reinvention of the Germans as everybody's second team seems a more startling, and certainly a more welcome, innovation of this World Cup than the vuvuzela).

But, unless you are Belgian or Portuguese, ready-made complexes of that sort are unavailable, not to mention unedifying. There is no reason why watching football should be an excuse for abandoning discernment. Here, instead, is a comparative guide to Dutch and Spanish culture, traced through several centuries of often interlinked history.

Like the more refined visitors to Amsterdam and Madrid, we shall avoid the stag night-infested red-light district south of the Oude Kerk, or the sports channel- saturated, full-English-breakfast pubs of the Costa del Sol. Immersion in comparative high culture must begin at the two very different temples to fine art, the Rijksmuseum and the Prado.

Related Articles

In the first, you will find the exquisite creations of Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, and Rembrandt van Rijn, the masterpieces of a nation that emerged from foreign occupation – Spanish, as bad luck would have it. In the second, there is a more international collection (including some Dutch loot), but the native offerings work even more powerfully on the emotions, from El Greco's mournful nobleman to Goya's grimly heroic portrayal of the execution of Spanish patriots by Napoleonic soldiers in 1808.

For more modern expressions of artistic genius, you have to cross town to the Van Gogh Museum, where Vincent's rather un-Dutch, Mediterranean sensibility is on lavish display. The Spanish capital can boast its modern master's most famous (and most shocking) work, Guernica, but it is to Málaga or to Barcelona, where several of the Spanish team collect their wages, that you must travel for whole buildings full of Picasso's work. Once Dalí, Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró and (the naturalised American) Willem de Kooning are taken into account, however, it becomes clear that on canvas, the two nations look as hard to separate as they do on grass.

The worlds of culture and science have their own equivalents of knock-out tournaments, presided over by Nobel prize committees. A glance at the list of Dutch and Spanish winners appears to put clear orange water between them. While Spanish citizens have been awarded prizes seven times, the Dutch have scooped 18 honours. But the difference isn't only in the numbers. Five of the Spanish laureates are literary figures, while none of the Dutch is.

Nobel committees, particularly literary ones, are hardly infallible (I defy you to name any of the Spanish literary winners: no, Lorca wasn't one). But the disparity seems to confirm a fundamental difference between the two nations. While the Dutch were building better windmills, the Spanish were conceiving immortal tales of deluded knights tilting at them. The Dutch literary equivalent of Cervantes, Joost van den Vondel, is better known as an Amsterdam park than as a poet.

If neither country has produced a modern author familiar to most English readers – though writers in Spanish from Vargas Llosa to García Márquez once swept all before them – some in the know (among them A S Byatt, born in the know) favour translations of Cees Noteboom or Harry Mulisch.

It was the conveniently named Brazilian midfielder Socrates who was said to have "scored a goal that sums up the philosophy of Brazilian football", but off the pitch, both Holland and Spain can call on their own deep thinkers. The Dutch one-two of the humanist Desiderius Erasmus and the rationalist Baruch Spinoza are perhaps better known than a Spanish self-mythologising Miguel de Unamuno, who briefly backed Franco – though José Ortega y Gasset, who flourished at the same time, had a more impressive record of opposing militarism.

More easily sampled expressions of culture don't always divide on the same lines of (Protestant) head following the Netherlands, while (Catholic) heart is tugged by Spain. There are, too, quite a few unequal contests here. While neither nation can boast composers who are household names, not only has Spain inspired one of the greatest operas of all (where is the Dutch Toreador Song?), it has offered the world flamenco, and given every teenage would-be rock star a reason to live, called the guitar. The Dutch were enthusiastic embracers of prog rock, that combination of the worst excesses of classical and popular, but the sensible among them don't like to talk about it.

In cinema, the balance is even more unevenly weighted. Queen Beatrix herself would have a hard time recommending the delights of Rutger Hauer and Paul Verhoeven over Luis Buñuel and Pedro Almodóvar.

On the face of it, the biggest mismatch of all comes in the kitchen. Against paella, chorizo, the joys of tapas, and the best restaurant in the world, El Bulli, the Dutch can offer… cheese. But perhaps a case can be made for the Netherlands even here. For a start, if you think Dutch cheese equals Edam, the world's blandest dairy confection, the wax casing of which is barely less palatable than the interior, think again. Try Nick Clegg's favourite, Leiden spiced with cumin (Komijnenkaas). Though other Dutch delicacies, from pickled herring to deep-fried sweet dumplings (Oliebollen) are strenuously acquired tastes, the imperial legacy of Dutch cuisine, in the form of sublime Indonesian cooking, takes some beating.

Here, there does seem to be a final link with Sunday's match. The Netherlands as represented by its team, seems to be a nation happily incorporating its past. They are led out by the Indonesian-descended Giovanni van Bronckhorst, and feature the skills of Khalid Boulahrouz and Ibrahim Afellay (both Dutch-Moroccan). Spanish multiculturalism is represented by Catalans and Basques among the Castilians.

Today's Spain is no less liberal, actually, than the Netherlands, which has a thriving far-Right. But when it comes to the football, perhaps the international choice for the outward looking Briton should be our nearer neighbour. Then again, you might prefer a Rioja gran reserva to fizzy lager.

David Horspool is the History Editor of the TLS, and the author of The English Rebel (Penguin)